(28 May 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
++AUDIO AS INCOMING++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Boston – 28 May 2025
1. Tamara Lanier, her attorney Ben Crump and Susanna Moore on stage
2. Photo of ‘Papa Renty’
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Tamara Lanier, great-great-great-granddaughter of Renty:
"This is a moment in history where the sons and daughters of stolen ancestors can stand with pride and rightfully proclaim a victory for reparations. After 15 long years of struggle and strife, Harvard has at long last agreed to relinquish all 15 daguerreotypes in its possession, including – including the stolen images of my enslaved ancestors Renty and Delia. This pilfered property, images taken without dignity or consent, and used to promote a racist pseudoscience will now be repatriated to a home where their stories can be told and their humanity can be restored."
4. Lanier’s attorney Joshua Koskoff, Tamara Lanirt. Ben Crump and Susanna Moore posing for pictures
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Susanna Moore, great-great-great-granddaughter of Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz:
"This victory reminds us that the meaning of such objects in museums can and should change. In gracing her mother’s dying wish to uncover who her people were, Tamara graced us all. No longer were the daguerreotypes at the Peabody Museum anonymous portrayals that just happened to reside there, their origins obscured. Tamara helped us understand they were objects stolen for a deeply racist project by my ancestor."
6. Tamara Lanier posing for pictures with her team
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Susanna Moore, great-great-great-granddaughter of Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz:
"She was not small and she was not alone because her mother’s spirit lived inside of her and her mother’s story had become her story and her daughter’s story and now her grandson’s. And back through generations before, that story began with a community leader named Renty whose spirit burned so brightly we stand here today 175 years later celebrating him."
8. Tamara Lanier posing for pictures with her team and family
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Susanna Moore, great-great-great-granddaughter of Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz:
"To be honest this was also a weighty gift to me and to our family. For while I’ve known vaguely that my ancestor was associated with racist ideas, it wasn’t until Tamara courageously demanded the daguerreotypes, until she raised up Renty’s story, that I found my capacity to look ever more deeply at my own inheritance of whiteness."
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Susanna Moore, great-great-great-granddaughter of Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz:
"Now, with any luck, there will be more cases like this that we’re hoping this is a precedent whereby leaders of institutions can reflect critically on the ways that they were complicit in the evils of slavery and the profits that ensued."
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Tamara Lanier, great-great-great-granddaughter of Renty:
"There’s a part of me that is kind of like waiting for the shoe to drop because there’s something else that Harvard will come up with that will stall this process. So I have a little anxiousness about that but overall this is a victory and I’m celebrating and I’m happy. I’m happy for the historicness of this case and being a part of that with my extraordinary attorneys here."
12. Tamara Lanier posing for pictures with her team
STORYLINE:
Harvard University will relinquish 175-year-old photographs believed to be the earliest taken of enslaved people to a South Carolina museum devoted to African American history as part of a settlement with one of the subjects’ descendants.
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